Dan The Engineer

CockroachDB! Why you need it and when you need it

Paul Lovett -


First and foremost, CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database designed to be highly available, scalable, and resilient, making it a suitable choice for various use cases. Here are some scenarios where you might want to consider opting for CockroachDB:

  1. High Availability: CockroachDB is built to ensure high availability and fault tolerance. If your application requires continuous uptime and can't afford significant downtime, CockroachDB can be a good fit. It automatically replicates data across nodes, so even if some nodes fail, your database remains accessible.
  2. Scalability: When your application needs to handle increasing amounts of data and user load, CockroachDB's distributed architecture allows it to scale horizontally by adding more nodes to the cluster. This can help your application handle growing demands without sacrificing performance.
  3. Global Distribution: If your application serves users across different geographic regions, CockroachDB's support for multi-region and multi-data centre deployments can ensure low-latency access to data, enhancing the user experience.
  4. Consistency and Strong ACID: CockroachDB provides strong consistency guarantees supporting ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transactions. If data integrity and correctness are critical for your application, CockroachDB can help ensure that your data remains consistent even in distributed environments.
  5. Cloud-Native: CockroachDB is cloud-native, making it well-suited for deployments on cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. It takes advantage of cloud infrastructure to provide auto-scaling and easy provisioning.
  6. Time-Series Data: CockroachDB has some features optimized for time-series data, commonly found in applications like IoT, monitoring, and analytics.
  7. SQL Compatibility: If you have an existing application or codebase that relies on SQL, CockroachDB can be an excellent choice as it supports the standard SQL interface, making the migration process smoother.

Isn't it just another Cloud DB?

Well, it is a cloud database and we know there are a few to choose from but the question I think we should answer here is how CockroachDB compares to several of its cloud competitors.

CockroachDB is just one of many cloud databases available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. To give you a better understanding, let's compare CockroachDB with some other popular cloud databases:

  1. Amazon Aurora: Amazon Aurora is a cloud-native relational database offered by AWS. It provides high availability and scalability and is designed to work seamlessly with other AWS services. Aurora is optimized for performance and offers features like automatic backups, replication, and read scaling. Compared to CockroachDB, Aurora may be more straightforward to set up for AWS users, but it is limited to the AWS ecosystem and as well as that is not a true masterless database. With Aurora, you have a write node and many read nodes. Write note goes down well you cant write. Oops!!
  2. Google Cloud Spanner: Google Cloud Spanner is a fully managed, globally distributed, horizontally scalable relational database. Like CockroachDB, it offers strong consistency and high availability. Spanner is suitable for global applications due to its ability to serve data with low latency across multiple regions. However, CockroachDB has broader multi-cloud support, while Spanner is primarily focused on Google Cloud.
  3. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB: Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service provided by Microsoft Azure. It supports NoSQL data models, including key-value, document, graph, and column-family databases. Cosmos DB is designed for high availability and low-latency access across the globe. CockroachDB, on the other hand, is focused on SQL-based relational data and provides consistency guarantees across distributed nodes.
  4. MongoDB Atlas: MongoDB Atlas is a fully managed cloud database service that offers scalability, automated backups, and continuous monitoring for MongoDB, a popular NoSQL database. While CockroachDB is designed for strong consistency and high availability, MongoDB Atlas emphasizes flexibility and easy horizontal scaling for NoSQL workloads.

Please remember though that when comparing cloud databases, consider factors such as data model requirements (SQL vs. NoSQL), scalability needs, global distribution requirements, consistency guarantees, ease of use, and integration with other cloud services.

It's important to remember too that Each database has its unique use cases and strengths, selecting the right one depends on your specific application's requirements and the trade-offs you are willing to make. It's often a good idea to conduct proof of concepts and value with your specific workload to determine the best fit for your project.

I love the fact I can run CockroachDB across multiple public cloud providers

As we have said, CockroachDB is designed with a distributed architecture and offers features that allow you to span your database cluster across multiple geographic regions or data centres, including those provided by different cloud providers.

The benefits of using CockroachDB in a multi-cloud setup include:

  1. Resilience and High Availability: Deploying CockroachDB across multiple cloud providers improves fault tolerance and ensures that your database remains accessible even if one cloud provider experiences an outage.
  2. Low-Latency Access: Having data replicated across multiple regions allows your application to access the nearest data replica, reducing latency and improving user experience.
  3. Vendor Lock-In Mitigation: By using CockroachDB across different cloud providers, you can avoid being tied to a single vendor, providing you with more flexibility and bargaining power.
  4. Disaster Recovery and Data Compliance: Multi-cloud deployments can enhance your disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring data redundancy across different cloud providers and helping to comply with data regulations in different regions.
  5. Global Reach: If your application serves users across different parts of the world, having CockroachDB in multiple cloud regions can improve data accessibility and performance for users in various geographic locations.

So there you are. Hopefully, CockroachDB can help with your use case. You can find all of the information you need here